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Compliments op 
CHARLES W. DABNEy, -;. 



EDUCATIONAL 
PRINCIPLES 
FOR THE SOUTH 



An Address delivered before the Department 
of Supermtendence of the National Edu- 
cational Association at Atlanta^ Georgia^ 
on February the twenty-fourth 
M C M 1 V 



By 

Charlks W. Dabnky, Ph. D., LL. D. 

PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TKNNKSSEK 



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isy u»M^>i^>Jk 

WAY 8 1914 



EDUCATIONAL PRINCIPLES 

WITH REFERBNCE TO THE NEEDS OF THE SOUTH 



SOCIAL evolution, like everything else in 
the universe, is continuous. As the 
Southern civilization of today is the 
product of that of yesterday, so the civiliza- 
tion of the future will be the outgrowth of 
that of today. The present educational needs of 
Southern people arise from circumstances which 
to a large extent grew out of peculiar condi- 
tions in the past. The schools for which we strive 
must, therefore, be built by Southern men and 
women on the foundations already laid and in 
accordance with the established principles of 
Southern civilization. 

In the old South there was a caste system of 
four general classes: the aristocracy of wealthy 
planters and slave owners ; the small farmers, 
living chiefly in the hills; the poor whites of the 
low country, and the African slaves. The num- 
ber of the planter class is greatly exaggerated in 
the popular mind. The body of the people be- 
longed to the class of the small farmer, a sturdy 
yeomanry, who by energy and thrift sometimes 
broke into the upper class. The planter, however, 
domineered all classes and to a great degree re- 
pressed the small farmer and the poor white man. 



Bducational Principles 



filling the role of the feudal lord in his relation 
to his poorer neighbors. 

We speak of the civil war as a revolution, and 
it was a complete revolution of our whole life, 
political, social and economic; but to the scien- 
tific student of history this cataclysm was only 
a phase of the regular jfevolutionary process, a 
necessary step in the development of our insti- 
tutions. It has served much the same purpose in 
our social evolution that the French Revolution 
serv^ed in the development of the European peo- 
ples ; it led us to form a new conception of the 
rights and powers of the individual, be he lord 
of the land, small farmer, poor white man, or 
negro. True it is that the Southern conception 
of the rights of the individual is still far from 
ideal, but it is growing, and will continue to grow 
with the educational and economic improvement 
of the depressed classes. 

The war not only freed the black man, it freed 
the white man as well. It made a way for the 
small farmers, liberated the poor white man from 
the bonds of a semi-feudal system and estab- 
lished both for the first time in full citizenship. 
It also freed the minds and spirits of the aristo- 
cratic classes, and by throwing them upon their 
own resources made them a stronger and a better 
people. In setting free all classes of Southern 
people the war cleared the way for the true 
democracy which will come when all the people 
are trained to the responsibilities of the new day. 



For the South 



The old civilization, whose ruling class was an 
aristocracy of land and slaves, has given place 
to a political and industrial democracy with no 
ruling class. But herein lies our danger, and 
out of this fact grows the special necessity for a 
system of popular education which shall train all 
our citizens to think clearly and act fearlessly 
each for himself. 

Now this growing conception of the rights and 
powers of the individual is accompanied by a 
growing consciousness of his need of preparation 
for all his functions, especially for the perform- 
ance of his duties as a citizen. Witness the 
great conventions of colored people like the one 
held recently at Tuskegee. Witness the political 
uprising of the poor white man a few years ago 
under the farmer's alliance and the populist party. 
Witness, also, the great movement for better 
schools now stirring the whole South. The plain 
white man has awakened and is pressing for the 
rights of his child, and to him we now look as our 
chief supporter in this effort for the improvement 
of the schools. 

The actual development of such a system of 
free public schools has been long retarded by the 
conservatism of the aristocratic class which re- 
fused to recognize the new individual and held as 
long as possible to old institutions and ideals. 
It has been delayed further by the poverty of the 
people, by the sparseness and consequent isolation 
of the population, and by the absence of roads 



Bducational Principles 



and other adequate means of communication ; but 
this new conception of manhood has now caught 
the mind of the plain man and will soon give rise 
to a great new system of education, supported by 
all the people for all the people. 

History teaches us that systems of education 
are even more dependent upon economic, than 
upon political and social, conditions. Political 
and social institutions are, in fact, largely the 
outgrowth of economic environment. It will help 
us, therefore, to get a better view of the situation 
in the South if we recall a few simple facts of its 
economic history. 

The industrial organization of the old South 
was largely rural. A system of slave labor 
compelled the South to remain almost exclu- 
sively an agricultural section. It drove out all 
other labor and so banished all manufactures 
except those of the plantations. Most of the 
simple arts and industries were represented upon 
the old-time plantation. The spinning and weav- 
ing houses, the wagon and blacksmith shop, the 
carpenter and cooper shops, were the factories of 
those days. They were also the industrial schools 
of the South. 

As the white family was the only social unit, 
so the plantation with its slaves grouped around 
that family, was the only industrial unit. Com- 
mercial centers there were, but there were almost 
no manufacturing towns. The old plantation was 
similar to the old English manor, a community 



For the South 



in which the labor of the members supplied all 
their wants except the finer groceries, the broad- 
cloth, the silks, and satins. My grandfather, an 
old Virginia planter, boasted that he ordinarily 
bought nothing except cotton, bar-iron, and wool 
hats. 

In a society built on these foundations, educa- 
tion and all forms of culture developed along 
strictly aristocratic lines. Though numerically in 
the minority, the wealthy planter, with his in- 
tensely individualistic ideas, was the controlling 
force politically and socially, consequently he 
alone determined the forms of education. He em- 
ployed private tutors for his children and sent the 
older boys and girls to the North for their higher 
education. In some cases several families might 
combine to support a school, but it was a private 
mstitution still, and the upper classes looked 
down on the common school as a thing beneath 
them. Some of the states had a few schools for 
the poor, commonly called '' Poor Schools " or 
" Hedge Schools," which did little good even for 
the classes they were designed to benefit. 

There were few teachers of Southern birth in 
the country. It was a profession not highly 
thought of, and the tutors of the children were 
either wandering adventurers or young persons 
from the North who were sometimes ordered 
along with the fine groceries and silks. A letter 
from an old South Carolina planter to his factor 
in Providence inclosed a long bill of goods whose 



Educational Principles 



last item was : " One school marm, not too young 
or good looking, who can teach French and draw- 
ing." The South was greatly indebted to the 
young " Yankee School Marm " and to her 
brother, frequently a graduate of Yale, Amherst, 
or Williams ; their office was duly recognized and 
they rarely failed, if they remained long enough, 
to attain to a high social position and to become 
devoted southerners. This service of the North- 
em school teacher was a broadening influence for 
both North and South, and I doubt not, if the 
author of Uncle Tom's Cabin had taught school 
for a period on a Georgia plantation, instead of 
in a Connecticut village, she would have greatly 
modified many statements in her famous book. 

In such a society as this, with a population es- 
sentially rural and intensely individualistic, scat- 
tered over a country sparsely settled, without 
towns or any larger social units, it has taken 
a long time to develop the social spirit and the 
habit of cooperation, so necessary for the sup- 
port of good public schools. When, to these con- 
ditions, was added the burden of establishing 
and maintaining a duplicate system of schools 
for the two races, side by side in the same vil- 
lages or neighborhood, the difficulties in the way 
of the public schools became greater than any 
people of equal power had ever faced. The 
struggle of the Southern people with this prob- 
lem, will, when fully known, command the ad- 
miration of every student of history. 



Por the South 



Let us next seek to learn something of the 
present educational conditions of the southern 
populations. In 1900, out of the 8,500,000 whites 
ten years of age and over in the eleven South 
Atlantic and Gulf states, including Tennessee and 
Arkansas, one million were illiterate. One-third 
of the illiterates of the United States are found 
in these states, which have, however, only one- 
fifth of the population. Of the 5,000,000 blacks 
in the same states, ten years of age and over, 
2,500,000 were illiterate. In the same states of 
4,400,000 males, 21 years of age and over, 1,200,- 
000 were illiterate. More than one-half of all 
the illiterate males of voting age in the United 
States live in the South. Disfranchisement can 
be only a temporary and partial remedy for this 
awful condition. We can never build a true 
democracy from this kind of material. 

How about the children and their schools? In 
the same Southern states there were last year 
about 4,000,000 white and 2,500,000 black chil- 
dren of school age. Sixty-two per cent, only 
was enrolled in the schools. Only 45 per cent, 
of the school population was actually in school 
80 to 90 days. The reports of the superintendents 
show that the average child who goes to school 
at all stops with the third grade, which means 
that he barely learns to read and figure a little. 
One white child in every five is left practically 
illiterate, and one-half the Negro children never 
really learn to read. No wonder that 24 per cent. 



Educational Principles 



of the grown people in these states, whites and 
blacks together, can not read and write. Three 
terms of schooling, at best, is what we are giving 
the average child as preparation for citizenship 
in the great republic! 

How then but by universal education shall we 
qualify the members of the democracy for the 
discharge of their duties? No selection of per- 
sons to be educated is possible. When you limit 
education to any class, you sow discontent over 
all the land and the ignorant portion of the popu- 
lation simply adds to the state's burden, rather 
than to its wealth and power. Besides, when we 
select a portion of the people to be educated, we 
are sure to neglect the very ones who most need 
training. In a democracy the free public school 
is the only efficient agent. There is no way to 
reach all those who need to be educated except 
by training all the children at the public expense. 

Universal education by the state is the solution 
of the Southerti problem. This was the doctrine 
of Jefferson, the prophet of our American 
democracy, and this principle is now embodied 
in the constitution and laws of every state in 
the Union. It remains for us to carry out this 
doctrine in practice. Schools must be provided 
for all the children, both whites and blacks, and, 
when we once have the schools, we must have 
compulsory laws to put the children in them. 
This is the supreme duty of the day. 

Four-fifths of the Southern people live in the 



10 



For the South 



country. The vital question, therefore, is how 
to provide elementary rural schools which shall 
be within the reach of every child. Every other 
consideration is a minor one compared with this 
one of good elementary schools for the people of 
the rural districts. Matters of school legislation 
and organization, plans for consolidation and 
transportation of pupils, and other such details 
must be decided in accordance with local condi- 
tions. They need not be discussed here. The vital 
question for the South at this stage is that of more 
money for the schools. In school houses, costing 
$300 each, with teachers receiving an average 
salary of %2y a month, we are giving the children 
in attendance 5 cents worth of education a day 
for 80 or 90 days in the year. Georgia paid 
6 cents a child a day to the teachers in her ''poor" 
schools seventy-five years ago. So long as these 
conditions prevail the money for the schools must 
be a chief consideration. 

The question as to whether the South should 
accept national aid in performing this national 
duty is an academic one at the present time, 
but since it has been recently raised by such 
authorities as the President of Harvard Univer- 
sity at the North and the President of the Uni- 
versity of Georgia at the South, it may be well to 
mention it here. 

Any plan of national aid should provide, not a 
largess for the South, but a consistent, rational 
plan for uplifting the retarded and depressed 



11 



Bducational Principles 



populations in all portions of the country. The 
people in some counties in Maine and in New- 
York are as illiterate as those in counties in the 
Southern Appalachians. This is truly a national 
problem, not one for the South alone, and we 
need, therefore, to take a broad view of it. 

Some persons speak of national aid to the states 
for the purpose of popular education, as if it were 
aid from the outside which it would be humili- 
ating, or, at least, unwise, to accept. It is a 
characteristically Southern and a noble sentiment 
that suggests this idea. But do we Southern peo- 
ple fully realize that we are an inherent part of 
the government of the United States and that all 
matters of national concern demand national con- 
sideration and assistance? Is not the national 
treasury our treasury? Is not the money in it 
our money put there in part by us? Is not the 
Negro as much a ward of the nation as the 
Indian ? If the nation provides for the education 
of the Indian, this wild child of the plain, is it 
not under an even greater obligation to provide 
for the education of the Negro, our fellow citizen 
in these states? During the recent wars the 
South was deeply stirred by national feeling and 
took a large part in the struggle for humanity 
and the redemption of the Cuban people. When 
we give the blood of our sons to the nation in a 
service of war for aliens, may we not honorably 
accept the aid of the national treasury in this 
greater service of peace for our own children? 

12 



For the South 



But some may fear that in national aid there 
lurks danger of federal interference with our 
state systems of schools. This, of course, we can 
not permit. The right of the state to the control 
of its schools and all their affairs is a principle 
that has never been questioned in the national 
councils. Andrew Jackson himself favored the 
distribution of the accumulated national funds 
to the states for the purposes of education. There 
is a precedent already in the appropriation of 
national funds to the states for the support of 
their agricultural colleges and stations. No at- 
tempt at federal control of those institutions has 
been made or is likely to be made. When meas- 
ures of national aid are actually proposed, if they 
ever are, our representatives will be sure to firmly 
maintain the rights of the states to control their 
schools through their own officials in accordance 
with their own methods. It will be done in this 
way or not at all. 

Methods can also be found to aid needy com- 
munities without paralyzing their powers, either 
of initiative or support. Assistance can be used 
in such a way as to arouse their initiative in 
improving educational conditions and in encour- 
aging local support of the schools. National aid 
should be given in proportion to the needs of 
the people as shown by school population, illiter- 
acy, and poverty, and in proportion to their sac- 
rifices to help themselves. While we are helping 
the Porto Ricans and Filipinos to establish their 



13 



Educational Principles 



schools, we should aid our own neglected peo- 
ples wherever they need assistance. 

It is not a new Blair Bill that we want; we 
rejected that long ago, and I hope, for my part, 
that that particular measure may never again be 
brought forward, but that some plan may be 
adopted which shall make the wealth of the whole 
nation contribute to the education and general 
social improvement of all peoples, who by reason 
of their poverty, their isolation, their race or 
recent condition of servitude, or from any other 
cause, have not been able to take their place in 
the grand army of American citizenship, or to 
catch step with the march of modern progress. 

With these principles accepted, we need not 
add anything on the subject of the education of 
the Negro. Our belief in universal education 
necessitates a beUef in the education of the Negro, 
for it presupposes that every human being, white 
or black, has a right to be educated. God has a 
purpose in every soul he sends into the world. 
The poorest, most helpless infant is not merely an 
accident, a few molecules of matter, or a few eons 
of energy merely, but a " plan of God," as Phil- 
lips Brooks has said, a part of the Divine plan 
of creation, and as such, deserves to be trained 
for its work. This it seems to me is the funda- 
mental argument for universal education — that 
every child has a right to a chance in life, be- 
cause God made him and made him to do some- 
thing in the universe. 

14 



For the South 



Every intelligent Southerner now believes that 
the right kind of education makes the Negro a 
more thrifty, a more useful, a more moral and a 
more law-abiding citizen, as it does every other 
man. Every Southern state is now committed by 
its constitution and laws to the principle of Negro 
education and, in their legislatures and courts, 
they have, so far, successfully resisted all pro- 
posals to divide the school funds, or to reduce the 
resources of the schools of the colored race to the 
taxes paid by the people of that race. If we dis- 
franchise the Negro, it only makes more binding 
our duty to prepare him for the proper use of the 
prerogative of citizenship. In fact, the disfran- 
chisement acts are all working to compel his edu- 
cation. The Southern people will be fair to the 
Negro in these matters. Any other course of con- 
duct will not only dishonor, but will injure their 
own race. 

The chief question now is not the kind of 
education we shall give these people, whether 
exclusively industrial, or partly literary, but it is 
the simple elementary training of the people of a 
child-race to perform the ordinary duties of life 
and to become decent American citizens. It will 
be time enough to discuss the merits of industrial 
education, as against those of the higher educa- 
tion, when we have provided good elementary 
schools and teachers for the Negro children. 

Another important problem is how to pro- 
vide the means with which to build these schools 



15 



Bdncational Principles for the South 

and pay these teachers. With or without na- 
tional aid, the Southern people will find a way to 
educate the Negroes. It is merely a question of 
time and methods; but we will do our duty to 
these our childhood friends, the laborers in our 
fields and in our homes. We people of the South 
have already led the African slave to heights 
which he never could have reached without our 
assistance, and so, in freedom, let us lead him 
on through the school to character, usefulness and 
prosperit}^ In the words of that splendid young 
hero and prophet of Georgia, whose statue stands 
here in these streets to remind Southern men in 
all generations of a life spent for the salvation 
of his beloved land : '' Let us make the Negro 
know that he, depending more than any other 
on the protection and bounty of his govern- 
ment, shall find in alliance with the best elements 
of the whites the pledge of safe and impartial 
administration. And let us remember this: that 
whatever wrong we put upon him shall return 
to punish us. Whatever we take from him in 
violence, that is unworthy and shall not endure. 
What we steal from him in fraud, that is worse. 
But what we win from him in sympathy and 
affection, what we gain in his confiding alliance, 
and confirm in his awakening judgment, that is 
precious and shall endure — and out of it shall 
come healing and peace." 



16 



